Pats always follow their leaders: From head coach Belichick on down

By DAVE GOLDBERGAP Football Writer

Wednesday

Jan 30, 2008 at 4:53 AMJan 30, 2008 at 4:55 AM

GLENDALE, Ariz. — When Pepper Johnson joined the New York Giants as a rookie in 1986, the locker room was ruled by two of his defensive teammates, Harry Carson and George Martin. They were given free rein to run things by Bill Parcells, coach of that Super Bowl-winning team.

"We've got 40 of those guys in our locker room now," said Johnson, now the defensive line coach of the New England Patriots.

That is an exaggeration. It's more like a dozen or so veterans, led by linebackers Mike Vrabel and Tedy Bruschi, who set the tone with the Patriots, a direct descendant of Parcells' Giants teams, which won two Super Bowls with Bill Belichick as their defensive coordinator. Fittingly, Belichick's Patriots will try to become the first 19-0 team in NFL history Sunday by winning the Super Bowl against the current edition of the Giants.

The symmetry is interesting.

Only recently has Belichick, back on relatively good terms with his one-time mentor, begun to acknowledge his roots with Parcells' Giants. He spent 12 seasons as an assistant coach in New York, and his references to those years have been a recurring theme since his team's 38-35 win in the Meadowlands to finish an unbeaten regular season. Those references intensified since the teams qualified to meet again for the NFL championship.

For all of Belichick's genius, one of the lesser-known secrets to New England's success — four Super Bowl victories in seven seasons if it beats the Giants — is the verbal self-control of its players.

Thirty-one other teams may have "look at me" players providing bulletin board material for opponents. The Patriots have none, not even Randy Moss, a loose cannon during his previous nine NFL seasons, but a total team man with New England. That's because he walked into a locker room full of veterans with two or three Super Bowl rings who had a code of their own that Moss wasn't about to break.

It's an even more stringent atmosphere for rookies, who learn quickly that they are at the bottom of the pecking order — seen but not heard.

A year ago, Laurence Maroney, the first-round draft pick who shared the running back load with veteran Corey Dillon, was discouraged from talking. This season, with Dillon gone, Maroney has proven to be quite enthusiastic, especially after his better games. But he's never gone to the extremes of other young emerging stars at skill positions, including his talkative counterpart with the Giants, Brandon Jacobs.

That's because Maroney has learned from his "handler," nine-year veteran Kevin Faulk, the third-down back who was elected a team captain at the start of the season. Maroney may have led the team in rushing, but Faulk has qualities that Belichick values as much or even more: a veteran who will say nothing to violate the team trust, and willingly teaches younger players to adhere to the rules.

"It's just something young players have to learn," says Faulk, who was broken in by the long-departed Terry Allen as a rookie in 1999, a year before the start of the Belichick era. "It's not only about playing. It's about being a professional."

There is, of course, a pecking order in New England.

Tom Brady is at the top of it and beyond it. Superstar quarterbacks are leaders and celebrities by definition, especially those with supermodel girlfriends. A few conspiracy theorists even suggested that Brady deliberately went out in public with a boot on his sprained right ankle to deflect attention from Moss, who was hit with a temporary restraining order filed on behalf of a woman he has known for 11 years.

That's because the code of silence and secrecy with the Patriots lends itself to such speculation.

Whatever Belichick says at the beginning of a week about the upcoming opponent (always complimentary, of course) is likely to be parroted almost word-for-word by the players who make themselves available that week: Brady, Faulk, Vrabel, Bruschi, safety Rodney Harrison, defensive lineman Richard Seymour, wide receiver Wes Welker, offensive linemen Matt Light, Dan Koppen and a few others.

Assistant coaches hardly talk at all, although under new rules set down by the league, coordinators are expected to be made available every two weeks.

But on media day at the Super Bowl, everyone is required to be there, which allowed Johnson to provide valuable insight into the system and its link to Parcells' Giants of two decades ago.

"When I walked in there as a rookie," Johnson said, "the first thing I understood was that the locker room belonged to Harry and George. They even decided the music that would be played. We don't go quite that far here."

But it's close.

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